


Neutral Tones

by IzzyLightwood



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, poetry is great isn't it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 23:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10147379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IzzyLightwood/pseuds/IzzyLightwood
Summary: Your eyes on me were as eyes that roveOver tedious riddles of years ago;And some words played between us to and froOn which lost the more by our love.





	

     Dan was sick of the arguing. He was tired. And it wasn’t even so much the fighting that got to him. They weren’t like other people, so they didn’t ‘argue’ in plain sight. It was jabs here and there—using all the hot water in a shower far longer than what was needed; eating breakfast without waiting for the other to wake; watching the next episode of an anime that they had promised to watch together.

     He wasn’t sure how this had happened. Well, he was, but it had snuck up nonetheless and given him severe whiplash. They were best friends, something Dan had been sure would come to be when he had first discovered AmazingPhil and his two-minute videos that made Dan question every single thing he’d tried to keep close as he grew.

     But, of course, it was easier to have the kind of relationship they had when there weren’t 12-year-olds breathing down their necks about this photo or that tweet. Anything that could label them as remotely More Than Friends was clenched like a life-raft in their following, which had grown steadily from the moment they first filmed together in October.

     They were each sat on the couch as far away from the other as possible. It was wrong and they both knew it; since when had personal space been relevant in all the years they’d been… what they were? Seven-foot-long sofas featured them squished as close as possible, cab rides entailed Dan thrown against Phil’s shoulder in such exaggerated roughness Phil couldn’t help the laughter which ensued. And yet here they sat.

     Dan scrolled. Phil played a dull game of Google Feud by himself. Dan’s eyes would flick up to Phil for intermittent half-seconds every so often, to gauge if he were truly as engrossed in his laptop as he contrived to be. Dan couldn’t concentrate.

     “Why’re you staring at me?”

     Dan forced his gaze to remain on the screen. “I’m not.”

     “You are.”

     With a frustrated breath out, Dan looked at Phil. “Am I not allowed?”

     “It’s distracting me.”

     “From what, a rousing 3,000 points on Google Feud?” Dan asked, peevish.

     “Very mature, Dan.” And there it was right there, these pokes that felt like stabs from a thin but merciless blade.

     Dan didn’t say anything more. Did Phil even care? He wondered why neither of them got up to simply go away to a bedroom for the space that was somehow lacking but there already between them. But Dan supposed it didn’t matter in any event, because the distance that had sprouted there wasn’t reservedly physical.

     He caught Phil’s eye and there saw searching, probing, as if he were trying to get a read on Dan, or deciphering tedious riddles of years past which had been long swept beneath the carpet. Erased before they’d even been created. Maybe that explained the question in Phil’s expression. But no sooner had he chanced to look at Dan than did he look away once more.

     It must have been Dan’s response to the ever-present _r u gay?1!?!?_ on every social media outlet since 2009 that had sliced the first microscopic hole in what they had. He’d acted irrationally, he could see that when he risked a glance into their histories, so intertwined from the moment they had met as to be the same. Just about four years later and he was still trying to keep it together, and maybe Phil didn’t want to try anymore. Did he? Didn’t he have to, for the sake of the Dan he was in 2008, the Dan who would obsess over AmazingPhil and dream of him so often it made his head spin in wondering what was reality and what was figment? Didn’t he owe them a chance? Or had he been the one to bring them to ruin; had he been the one destined to destroy it all from the very beginning, at that train station in Manchester where they had collided like gunfire? Just as detrimental.

     They had a Radio Show, a new London flat, friends made through each other’s ties. He wouldn’t be the first to wreck it all, and he knew Phil didn’t want to either. They were stuck at an impasse and had no idea how to find their way through it.

     “Any thoughts on dinner?”

     “It’s two in the afternoon, Dan.”

     “When’s that stopped me being hungry?” He meant to sound joking, light, to ease a way into conversation, but Phil didn’t seem to be having it. “I was thinking take-away,” he tried again.

     “From where?”

     “That Chinese place.”

     “Sounds good.”

     Dan nodded slowly. He loved Phil’s voice. It was a sound he cherished, and he missed how it used to sound around _him_. He didn’t want to lose that, he honestly didn’t. Not having Phil would be a 90-kilo weight sledging onto both his knees at once, as he then propelled down the steps to promptly slam a hole into the wall at the bottom with his head. Simply, it would be excruciatingly painful and not something he could ever imagine surviving through. But Phil seemed to have one foot out the door as it were.

     He had to say something.

     “You’re my best friend.”

     Phil looked across at him, blank. “Okay.”

     “You know that? Since we met, it’s been you, always.”

     “I know.” Generally, Dan wasn’t sentimental, and Phil had become accustomed to affection being shown in the brief squeeze of a hand or American pancakes in the morning. “Why’re you saying this?”

     “Because I don’t think you _do_ know. How much you mean to me and I…” Dan closed his laptop. “I don’t want this to end with us arguing over which between us gotten the worse end of the deal. Who’s been more miserable or lost the more because of it all. As if that’s a valid thing to fight over.”

     Phil’s blue eyes were wide. “Dan…?”

     “Okay? I don’t want that. I don’t think you do either but please don’t—please, can we stop this?”

     “What?”

     “We don’t need to be more than friends,” Dan swore. “It hasn’t felt fully right since I was 20 and I get that. But I can’t abandon the friendship.”

     “I haven’t known what to say. All that’s happened…”

     “I know. Me too. And we both know I’m not exactly good with this stuff.” Dan wiped his clammy hands over his thighs. Tentative, Phil reached over to nudge Dan’s arm. There was a small, reassured smile on his lips.

     “You aren’t so bad,” he said.

     Dan could feel his throat constricting. “You’ve always said so. Maybe I’ll believe it one of these days.”

 


End file.
